Vevo Becomes Victim of Targeted Data Breach – OurMine Hackers Posted 3.12TB worth of Data Online.
The Self-claimed White Hat Hacking group OurMine is back in the news and this time it has targeted Vevo and released nearly 3.12TB of its internal data online. According to analysis, some of the documents released online are of sensitive nature.
The group’s latest target Vevo is also no ordinary firm at all as it is a joint venture of a number of mainstream music firms namely Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, Google’s parent firm Alphabet Inc., Warner Music Group and Abu Dhabi Media.
The cache of internal files that have been posted online by OurMine comprises of official documents, promotional content, and videos. Although most of these files are social media marketing related content, artists’ info and weekly or monthly music charts and thus, are not confidential, but some of the files are classified such as those that reveal the company’s offices’ alarm code and must be taken offline immediately.
Reportedly, Vevo has earned great profits this year (nearly $200 million) and generated 25 million daily views with the help of their annual ad commitments and a remarkable artists’ line-up featuring the likes of Beyonce, Ariana Grande, and Taylor Swift. It is time that the company invested some of its earnings in tightening its site’s security.
OurMine is known for targeting famous organizations’ websites or social media accounts of known celebrities to demonstrate how weak the security measures implemented by these high profile firms are. To hack Vevo and acquire such massive amount of data; OurMine hackers hijacked Okta account of a Vevo employee.
Okta is a workplace app. When the data was hacked, the group reached out to the employee and was told to “fuck off” therefore the hackers posted the data online and sent Gizmodo an email stating that they would remove the data if the company asks them to do so.
When Vevo was inquired about the data breach, a spokesperson admitted that Vevo has experienced data breach caused by a “phishing scam via LinkedIn.” As per the spokesperson, the company was currently busy in investigating the “extent of exposure” and addressing the issue.
In an email conversation with HackRead, Rich Campagna, CEO at Bitglass said that “Acquiring credentials to access sensitive data is increasingly easy and incredibly lucrative for today’s hackers. The ease with which credentials can be compromised starts with risky behavior among users. Many end-users, for example, have a habit of recycling passwords across corporate and personal accounts, including personal social media, banking, and corporate email. This practice poses a risk to all data accessible to that user.
Enterprises must follow best practices in authenticating users, starting with a proactive approach to identifying suspicious logins. Dynamic identity management solutions that can detect potential intrusions, require multi-factor authentication, and integrate with existing systems for managing user access can be much more effective than basic password protection. For example, if a system records an employee logging into a cloud application from a host of different countries, it can alert IT security teams of suspicious behavior and they can lock that account, preventing a possible breach.”
Remember, OurMine is known for using leaked credentials from previous data leaks including MySpace, LinkedIn, and Dropbox. So far, the group is known for various high profile breaches so far including the hijacking of WikiLeaks’ website, Mark Zuckerberg’s Pinterest and Twitter accounts and HBO’s Twitter handle, has admitted having conducted the data breach. The same group also targeted Twitter account of Google CEO Sundar Pichai and hacked BuzzFeed and BusinessInsider etc.
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